The Unit of Caring

Anonymous asked: DO you agree with William MacAskill's argument that effective altruists should avoid buying Fair Trade goods?

As far as I’m familiar with it, yes. 

The argument I’m familiar with is basically: getting certified as Fair Trade is really expensive and requires ability to navigate administrative procedures in the United States and United Kingdom, which means that your company can only do it with an English-speaking legal team; the very poorest places in the world can therefore pretty much never get certified Fair Trade, whatever their labor practices, so in practice buying Fair Trade is buying from somewhere wealthy enough to comply and demonstrate compliance instead of from the poorest people in the world. 

And it costs a lot more; if you want to use the difference in money between the cost of cheap clothes and food and the cost of Fair Trade clothes and food to fight poverty and exploitation, you’d do better buying the cheap clothes and food and sending the difference to poor people. 

That said, I worry a little bit that some people will be like ‘I don’t buy Fair Trade goods because it’s not effective altruism’ and, you know, not actually do other things instead. Instead of ‘effective altruists should avoid buying Fair Trade goods’ I would phrase it as ‘effective altruists should focus their time and money on ways of improving the world that work better than buying Fair Trade goods’, and that I agree with without reservation.

• 3 March 2017
• #effective altruism
• 54